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As the title says, prime example being all of the FW culls.

Just interested to see.

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
As the title says, prime example being all of the FW culls.

Just interested to see.

There was a massive discussion on this here when the FW international pricing changed.

It's not as simple as that. A lot of people avoid recasters on ethical grounds. Not just because it infringes GW's intellectual property, but because recasters aren't putting any of the creative effort into developing the hobby and perhaps more importantly it's often funding people who also take part in other, sometimes more elicit, black market activities.

At the end of the day if you don't like their pricing, you don't have to buy their IP.

 Stux wrote:

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
As the title says, prime example being all of the FW culls.

Just interested to see.

There was a massive discussion on this here when the FW international pricing changed.

It's not as simple as that. A lot of people avoid recasters on ethical grounds. Not just because it infringes GW's intellectual property, but because recasters aren't putting any of the creative effort into developing the hobby and perhaps more importantly it's often funding people who also take part in other, sometimes more elicit, black market activities.

At the end of the day if you don't like their pricing, you don't have to buy their IP.

Entirely agree.

I wasn't aware there was another discussion and I am certainly not advocating the use of recasters.

It just seems some decisions being made are inevitably going to drive people in the direction of the recaster. I know I harp on about it but an example being canning the R&H FW line - my favourite useless rabble.

Yeah they will, you're right. But I think the whales will still by official FW and that is what funds that side of the business ultimately.

At the end of the day this is an expensive luxury product. People don't need it, and they know it's expensive going in. Within that, Forgeworld is an even more expensive boutique high end brand.

If people want to buy the hobby equivalent of a fake Rolex I can't stop them though!

If forgeworld doesn't produce the mini anymore and none can be found on the secondary markets then people who want those mini's will buy from recasters. The whole morality argument does not hold water as morality changes from person to person. For ME, I don't buy recasts or anything not official for various reasons. But I would not shame people for doing so if the above conditions were true. Legality is a big factor in this also. Which changes from country and region to other regions.

Table wrote:
If forgeworld doesn't produce the mini anymore and none can be found on the secondary markets then people who want those mini's will buy from recasters. The whole morality argument does not hold water as morality changes from person to person. For ME, I don't buy recasts or anything not official for various reasons. But I would not shame people for doing so if the above conditions were true. Legality is a big factor in this also. Which changes from country and region to other regions.

Just because people have different opinions on morality doesn't mean it's meaningless to talk about it. Mostly because there's a REASON some people believe it is immoral, and talking about that reason is important.

FW are screwing the pooch, big time. Instead of doubling down on extortionate prices, they need to slash them down to something more approachable. You stop pirates by makng them irrelevant: buy some knock off from china, or pay 40% more and get the real thing? Everyone would go FW.

The impression I get at the moment, between canning lines, crap indexes and international shipping charges and mark up, is GW are setting FW up to fail. Which is ridiculous given it is a group company.

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
The impression I get at the moment, between canning lines, crap indexes and international shipping charges and mark up, is GW are setting FW up to fail. Which is ridiculous given it is a group company.

I hear some people high up have beef with the Forgeworld director and can't just get rid of him.

I still don't think they'd intentially tank a division, but there might be a bit of a battle behind the scenes that is causing some of this.

Stux wrote:

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
As the title says, prime example being all of the FW culls.

Just interested to see.

There was a massive discussion on this here when the FW international pricing changed.

It's not as simple as that. A lot of people avoid recasters on ethical grounds. Not just because it infringes GW's intellectual property, but because recasters aren't putting any of the creative effort into developing the hobby and perhaps more importantly it's often funding people who also take part in other, sometimes more elicit, black market activities.

At the end of the day if you don't like their pricing, you don't have to buy their IP.

This immensely.

But FW and by proxy GW are kinda screwin' the proverbial pooch with how they are presenting themselves to the community. I love FW stuff, but when they changed their pricing it really made me reconsider a couple of purchases(was looking @ warhound & mastodon) so now I'm not going to buy them. I will stick to upgrades & other $100ish models.

If they would just fix the rules and $€¥etc problems I think recasters would lose some steam and have an even harder time with even smaller profit margins. GW can address this and really crack down on use stuff, since FW is the only official place to get stuff there are records and etc so they could have a proof of purchase (something) for tourney players and store events.

Like I said in other FW threads, they pissed me off not just by increasing prices, but presenting it as doing us a favor. Notice that the free shipping over $120 has been 'extended,' so even that's going to likely go away soon. Like, if you need to raise prices, raise the prices. But don't fething lie about how it's in my best interest. Nobody would seriously have paid the 20+% increase in prices from the localization change just to get slightly faster shipping.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Racerguy180 wrote:

Stux wrote:

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
As the title says, prime example being all of the FW culls.

Just interested to see.

There was a massive discussion on this here when the FW international pricing changed.

It's not as simple as that. A lot of people avoid recasters on ethical grounds. Not just because it infringes GW's intellectual property, but because recasters aren't putting any of the creative effort into developing the hobby and perhaps more importantly it's often funding people who also take part in other, sometimes more elicit, black market activities.

At the end of the day if you don't like their pricing, you don't have to buy their IP.

This immensely.

But FW and by proxy GW are kinda screwin' the proverbial pooch with how they are presenting themselves to the community. I love FW stuff, but when they changed their pricing it really made me reconsider a couple of purchases(was looking @ warhound & mastodon) so now I'm not going to buy them. I will stick to upgrades & other $100ish models.

If they would just fix the rules and $€¥etc problems I think recasters would lose some steam and have an even harder time with even smaller profit margins. GW can address this and really crack down on use stuff, since FW is the only official place to get stuff there are records and etc so they could have a proof of purchase (something) for tourney players and store events.

Hahahahaha if they start doing that I'm definitely never buying FW again. One, how do you account for everyone who bought FW pre-proof of purchase? Two, what proof of purchase could you come up with that wasn't a) easy to forge and b) still cheap enough to not make them raise prices even further? That's just a trainwreck idea on so many levels.

What they need to do is lower prices. They don't need to be as cheap as the Chinese, they just need to not be literally 100-200% more than them. Design overhead is only so much. Fun fact. When FW raised its prices this year, the recasters' prices stayed exactly the same, so the gap got even wider.

 grouchoben wrote:
FW are screwing the pooch, big time. Instead of doubling down on extortionate prices, they need to slash them down to something more approachable. You stop pirates by makng them irrelevant: buy some knock off from china, or pay 40% more and get the real thing? Everyone would go FW.

You realize right that it's flat out impossible for FW to combat recasters by price? Whatever they do as long as they sell resin they flat out cannot make same price nevermind cheaper. Only way you can fight them with price would be to sell plastic but that then becomes non feasible for the kind of low-sale kits FW makes.

I don't want to fly over to the UK, spend money on 10 separate purchases on products I don't care about, in order to get the new Terminator Chaplain.

You can guess what I did.

RogueApiary wrote:
Like I said in other FW threads, they pissed me off not just by increasing prices, but presenting it as doing us a favor. Notice that the free shipping over $120 has been 'extended,' so even that's going to likely go away soon. Like, if you need to raise prices, raise the prices. But don't fething lie about how it's in my best interest. Nobody would seriously have paid the 20+% increase in prices from the localization change just to get slightly faster shipping.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Racerguy180 wrote:

Stux wrote:

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
As the title says, prime example being all of the FW culls.

Just interested to see.

There was a massive discussion on this here when the FW international pricing changed.

It's not as simple as that. A lot of people avoid recasters on ethical grounds. Not just because it infringes GW's intellectual property, but because recasters aren't putting any of the creative effort into developing the hobby and perhaps more importantly it's often funding people who also take part in other, sometimes more elicit, black market activities.

At the end of the day if you don't like their pricing, you don't have to buy their IP.

This immensely.

But FW and by proxy GW are kinda screwin' the proverbial pooch with how they are presenting themselves to the community. I love FW stuff, but when they changed their pricing it really made me reconsider a couple of purchases(was looking @ warhound & mastodon) so now I'm not going to buy them. I will stick to upgrades & other $100ish models.

If they would just fix the rules and $€¥etc problems I think recasters would lose some steam and have an even harder time with even smaller profit margins. GW can address this and really crack down on use stuff, since FW is the only official place to get stuff there are records and etc so they could have a proof of purchase (something) for tourney players and store events.

Hahahahaha if they start doing that I'm definitely never buying FW again. One, how do you account for everyone who bought FW pre-proof of purchase? Two, what proof of purchase could you come up with that wasn't a) easy to forge and b) still cheap enough to not make them raise prices even further? That's just a trainwreck idea on so many levels.

What they need to do is lower prices. They don't need to be as cheap as the Chinese, they just need to not be literally 100-200% more than them. Design overhead is only so much. Fun fact. When FW raised its prices this year, the recasters' prices stayed exactly the same, so the gap got even wider.

Nah, because it's a top end boutique product within this industry.

China can sell knock off designer watches and bags and such for like 1% of their normal retail. Doesn't mean Gucci reduce their prices.

As I say, the whales and collectors will still want the prestige of the genuine product. I'm certain that market is what sustains Forgeworld. Reducing their prices is a terrible business move for such a product, because you have to maintain the perceived value of the product for these sorts of customers.

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:

 Stux wrote:

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
As the title says, prime example being all of the FW culls.

Just interested to see.

There was a massive discussion on this here when the FW international pricing changed.

It's not as simple as that. A lot of people avoid recasters on ethical grounds. Not just because it infringes GW's intellectual property, but because recasters aren't putting any of the creative effort into developing the hobby and perhaps more importantly it's often funding people who also take part in other, sometimes more elicit, black market activities.

At the end of the day if you don't like their pricing, you don't have to buy their IP.

Entirely agree.

I wasn't aware there was another discussion and I am certainly not advocating the use of recasters.

It just seems some decisions being made are inevitably going to drive people in the direction of the recaster. I know I harp on about it but an example being canning the R&H FW line - my favourite useless rabble.

I was like this until they didnt re-do the Corsair kit for over 2 years then killed them off in 8th, the one army that i had more fun in 40k than i ever had or ever will again (and i played a balanced list).

I emailed and asked them for 3yrs+ now for bits/rules and they just dont even care, it wasnt until a year after 8th that they even added a faq for them.

Literally would take 1 days of work to make that army playable again, but no........ So no i dont care about FW, they had their chance to care about us and they didnt, so why should i care about FW?

I was like this until they didnt re-do the Corsair kit for over 2 years then killed them off in 8th, the one army that i had more fun in 40k than i ever had or ever will again (and i played a balanced list).

I emailed and asked them for 3yrs+ now for bits/rules and they just dont even care, it wasnt until a year after 8th that they even added a faq for them.

Literally would take 1 days of work to make that army playable again, but no........ So no i dont care about FW, they had their chance to care about us and they didnt, so why should i care about FW?

Well as a R&H player i whole heartedly agree.
Frankly i still avoid recasters but there are other Alternatives (atleast for me) that are cheaper and off better quality.
So why should i bother with fw.
Same really even for csm stuff, the rules are hot garbage, spread artificially, their whole new policy fethed me over and the last order (a Decimator) had massive faults in it's shoulder.

 Stux wrote:

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
The impression I get at the moment, between canning lines, crap indexes and international shipping charges and mark up, is GW are setting FW up to fail. Which is ridiculous given it is a group company.

I hear some people high up have beef with the Forgeworld director and can't just get rid of him.

I still don't think they'd intentially tank a division, but there might be a bit of a battle behind the scenes that is causing some of this.

As conspiratorial as that sounds, its one of the only explanations that makes sense. From a marketing standpoint, they are basically self immolating themselves at the moment. To start they have less 40k products available now, then they did 5-10 years ago. They have shifted to releasing almost exclusively Horus Heresy range products. That in itself is self sabotage as 40k is vastly more popular/played than 30k everywhere. Then they decided it was to much trouble to update rules for OOP models. This means that anytime you purchase a product from them, tomorrow it could be discontinued and its no longer supported. Then they increased the cost of their models between 20-46% (depending on where you live & the product) overnight with little/no benefit or explanation to the customer. I have lots of other hobbies. I have never seen anything like what Forgeworld is doing.

Haha, FW is not an option if you live below the equator. Besides so many people down here have advanced the way they do recasts after years of practise. We don't need to go to China when at least 1 in 20 local gamers/collectors can do it better. Recasters are easy to find, they are the guys selling 'accidentally bought' FW kits de-molded and cleaned with apparently untagged bags. Even if they don't compare to Chinese prices, they are local with no postage costs, done with better resin, and are just as resellable in our community. And as for morality, we gave up on them when they left our pricing/support questions unanswered, in our local community alone we spent years fighting to have FW units allowed in our comps, but GW had refused outright to support us if we did.

tneva82 wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
FW are screwing the pooch, big time. Instead of doubling down on extortionate prices, they need to slash them down to something more approachable. You stop pirates by makng them irrelevant: buy some knock off from china, or pay 40% more and get the real thing? Everyone would go FW.

You realize right that it's flat out impossible for FW to combat recasters by price? Whatever they do as long as they sell resin they flat out cannot make same price nevermind cheaper. Only way you can fight them with price would be to sell plastic but that then becomes non feasible for the kind of low-sale kits FW makes.

I disagree. The casting process is cheap, the materials are dirt cheap, the design process is expensive. FW are currenly charging insane prices for a lot of their kits. Properly weirdly high. Bringing them down, offering sane shipping prices, running sales, promising not to discontinue lines, offering loyalty schemes, just normal average business practice, would take a massive bite out of the piracy problem.

They don't have to beat recasters on price - that would be impractical. What they do have to do to survive is to bring their prices into vague competition with them, hence the 40% more expensive suggestion. I don't know the details, but I do know they're going the wrong way: hiking prices in response to piracy is madness. IMO it's a matter of pricing more realistically, now that people know how cheap resin is, or slowly wither away.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I mean, there's a reason no one gets recasts of GW plastic right? There's no point. FW has to approach something similar. (Correct me if I'm wrong and people DO buy recast GW stuff! )

 grouchoben wrote:
FW are screwing the pooch, big time. Instead of doubling down on extortionate prices, they need to slash them down to something more approachable. You stop pirates by makng them irrelevant: buy some knock off from china, or pay 40% more and get the real thing? Everyone would go FW.

Remember Limewire and Grokster? The thing that put a stop to that wasn't lowering the prices of CDs, it was the music industry recognizing that e-distribution was literally going to destroy the existing market and jumping to the new ship. CD prices did eventually go down but that was the result of the demand for physical media drying up.

If GW wants to stop the pirates they need to just shutter FW altogether and start selling 3D printer file downloads for those models at resonable prices. I'm not going to pay FW prices or pirate prices, but I'd definitely pay $5 to be able to print as many Marine super-heavy tanks for myself as I want without worrying about law suits.

Stux wrote:

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
As the title says, prime example being all of the FW culls.

Just interested to see.

There was a massive discussion on this here when the FW international pricing changed.

It's not as simple as that. A lot of people avoid recasters on ethical grounds. Not just because it infringes GW's intellectual property, but because recasters aren't putting any of the creative effort into developing the hobby and perhaps more importantly it's often funding people who also take part in other, sometimes more elicit, black market activities.

At the end of the day if you don't like their pricing, you don't have to buy their IP.

You don't answer a question like this by measuring who didn't get pushed to piracy, you measure it by how many did. Recasts are openly discussed in many places without scorn nowadays.

tneva82 wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
FW are screwing the pooch, big time. Instead of doubling down on extortionate prices, they need to slash them down to something more approachable. You stop pirates by makng them irrelevant: buy some knock off from china, or pay 40% more and get the real thing? Everyone would go FW.

You realize right that it's flat out impossible for FW to combat recasters by price? Whatever they do as long as they sell resin they flat out cannot make same price nevermind cheaper. Only way you can fight them with price would be to sell plastic but that then becomes non feasible for the kind of low-sale kits FW makes.

That's not true. People don't buy recasts because they're strictly cheaper. If a recast was $100 and FW was $120, nearly everyone would just buy FW. When the recast is $100 and FW was $250 a few months ago, and randomly jacked the price up to $300 overnight because reasons, a lot of people are going to turn to recasters. I was one of those "never buy any knockoff products of any kind ever" type of people. I built a 3k ad mech army for 30k, all from FW. All my parts on my S2000 are JDM. I bought an authentic Omega Planet Ocean Liquidmetal. I have a Gucci wallet that was purchased at a Gucci store in Italy. However, at this point I prefer to shop around because I feel like FW are just milking me. The 30% overnight price hike to their already borderline insane prices was just too much for me to stomach.

 grouchoben wrote:
I mean, there's a reason no one gets recasts of GW plastic right? There's no point. FW has to approach something similar. (Correct me if I'm wrong and people DO buy recast GW stuff! )

Oh, they definitely do. I know some people with recast stuff, and some of it is GW rather than FW.

 Commissar Benny wrote:

 Stux wrote:

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
The impression I get at the moment, between canning lines, crap indexes and international shipping charges and mark up, is GW are setting FW up to fail. Which is ridiculous given it is a group company.

I hear some people high up have beef with the Forgeworld director and can't just get rid of him.

I still don't think they'd intentially tank a division, but there might be a bit of a battle behind the scenes that is causing some of this.

As conspiratorial as that sounds, its one of the only explanations that makes sense. From a marketing standpoint, they are basically self immolating themselves at the moment. To start they have less 40k products available now, then they did 5-10 years ago. They have shifted to releasing almost exclusively Horus Heresy range products. That in itself is self sabotage as 40k is vastly more popular/played than 30k everywhere. Then they decided it was to much trouble to update rules for OOP models. This means that anytime you purchase a product from them, tomorrow it could be discontinued and its no longer supported. Then they increased the cost of their models between 20-46% (depending on where you live & the product) overnight with little/no benefit or explanation to the customer. I have lots of other hobbies. I have never seen anything like what Forgeworld is doing.

almost all the 30k stuff is playable in 40k in some form or other, except the primarchs, who are wildly popular for obvious reasons

this seems a little too conspiratorial

 grouchoben wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
I mean, there's a reason no one gets recasts of GW plastic right? There's no point. FW has to approach something similar. (Correct me if I'm wrong and people DO buy recast GW stuff! )

A kid in my 40k gaming group bought three recasted Leman Russ Tanks. " I'm not going to pay $150 for three tanks!"

We're both in Costal California, which is one of the highest cost of living areas in the entire United States. I'd guess he's about 19 and works retail, still living at home. Probably going to a community college. He's a good kid, and a good 40k and Kill Team player.

I started 40k (briefly) at that age. I was getting the best deals I could afford, as I too was in college and working retail. Back then, recasts wouldn't have bothered me; I was looking for the most bang for my buck.

Now, I've Graduated and make more money. I don't care for the pricing of FW, and haven't had much interest beyond the infantry sets. However, If I buy, I'll buy official. I'd still buy official now even if I wasn't making more than retail; it would just take me longer.

In short, I don't blame the kid for buying recasts as he's tight on money. I would not take the same action myself now, but I can understand why he did it.

I avoid recasted GW stuff simply because I think the GW stuff is guaranteed to be of better quality. No moral issue at all.

FW on the other hand does not have that same seal of quality so while I don't really own much stuff from them at the moment, and it's much more pricey and less common in general, so anything I do need I'll definitely be being recasted.



Also, it's interesting to see how much this community has changed. I remember the irrational teeth gnashing and mouth frothing when people just mentioned the word on here before

I suppose I'm not as limited in some of this as tournament-goers, but I use a lot of Forgeworld Index units in my Chaos Space Marine force...I just use alternate 3rd party models which are obviously produced for that purpose. They're better resin than FW, look pretty darn similar...and aren't pirated recasts. Kromlech produces a fantastic line of alternate sculpts for loads of GW and Forgeworld items...so I'll keep buying those. Sure I can't run them at tournaments or GW stores, but I don't game at either of those - so it's a moot point.

Example: Copycat Scorpius Turret


+Can buy just the turret (which you can't do from Forgeworld)
+Looks incredibly similar (more attractive actually to me)
+Cost less than 20-30% of what Forgeworld would ask for it if they even sold separate turrets.

Example: Rapier Quad-Heavy Bolter


+Has the correct weapon and form factor
+Has a distinct but 40K-themed aesthetic
+Cost me less than 40% of the cost of a Foreworld rapier.

So, while I don't consider Kromlech a recaster by any stretch, Forgeworlds prices and poor resin quality has absolutely made me spend lots of money on alternate sculpts that meet the datasheet entries. I have several of the above items, and a whole host of tank modifications, turrets etc. from Blood and Skull Industries as well. GW gets very little of my money nowdays because they've priced themselves out of consideration.

tneva82 wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
FW are screwing the pooch, big time. Instead of doubling down on extortionate prices, they need to slash them down to something more approachable. You stop pirates by makng them irrelevant: buy some knock off from china, or pay 40% more and get the real thing? Everyone would go FW.

You realize right that it's flat out impossible for FW to combat recasters by price? Whatever they do as long as they sell resin they flat out cannot make same price nevermind cheaper. Only way you can fight them with price would be to sell plastic but that then becomes non feasible for the kind of low-sale kits FW makes.

I don't feel like that true. There is a massive difference between a 40$ recast with a 120$ fw price and a 30$ recast and a 65$ fw price. I personally would spend 80 CAD for a forgeworld naught but would never buy one for over 100 (which btw is roughly what it was to now).

 ZergSmasher wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
I mean, there's a reason no one gets recasts of GW plastic right? There's no point. FW has to approach something similar. (Correct me if I'm wrong and people DO buy recast GW stuff! )

Oh, they definitely do. I know some people with recast stuff, and some of it is GW rather than FW.

I've seen logan grimnar recast in resin and it was flawless, guy had no interest in Santa's sleigh so got the recast for €8 he was very happy.

Know another guy bought a knight lancer for 50% of retail, he would never of gotten one full price.

People will go to the best deal, GW's refusal to how to market pressure only costs them business.

When we've discussed recasts in the past, a lot of the sentiment was that they were great, because they feth'd GW over, as GW were intrinsically evil and going to go bust anyway. A lot of that rationale has evaporated (altho it's perhaps still applicable overseas).

I have a couple of recasts, bought as an experiment from the supposedly best people, which weren't worth the saving to me, in terms of the time to clean them up etc - and I bought my main FW items, ie a Kustom Stompa, directly from Warhammer World, where they were actually really nice people.

But there will always be folk who will buy crappier products and get a bit of a thrill from the 'savings' , whether real or not. FW reducing their prices would make minimal difference.